Template talk:Graphic novel list

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Contents 1 Concerning the original manga titles 2 Bug? 3 ISBN 10/13 4 Summary length 5 Volume titles 6 Thought: optional VolumeTitle

[edit] Concerning the original manga titles

I'm having a little trouble with this one, so maybe someone can shed some light on it. When looking up original episode titles for anime, it's relatively easy since we have Anime News Network or the anime's official website to check for that, but for the original titles for the manga, I am finding it next to impossible to find original titles for Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl, and I'm sure it'll be just as bad for any other manga out there. What I want to know is, is there someway to make finding these original titles easier, or will 99% of manga chapter lists not include them?--十八 21:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The chapter list can be something of a pain, because you are correct, there is rarely a source for them. I asked about that in the main project talk page, and the basic answer was wait for someone to enter it who has the original Japanese versions. :P Collectonian (talk) 21:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

As Collectonian said. Sometimes you can find a chapter list on the Japanese wikipedia, or for currently running series a scanlator who's willing to update a current list. I suspect for most of the manga I'm interested in, I'll have just the English titles for a while. —Quasirandom (talk) 00:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bug?

Lovely Complex#manga -- putting it in action with a list of just dates/ISBNs, and there's a big gap above the table -- one that grows, proportional to the number of rows used. —Quasirandom (talk) 04:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixed - it was a couple of line breaks between the #if calls messing up the internal HTML. —TangentCube, Dialogues 04:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah. Thanks! —Quasirandom (talk) 15:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ISBN 10/13

While doing a little research into ISBNs, I came across this entry on Amazon.co.jp for the first Kashimashi manga volume which lists two ISBNs: ISBN-10 and ISBN-13. What I want to know is what is the difference between these two, and which one should I use in a manga list (or should I just list both?).--十八 11:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Heh. This is a pretty problem. In general, you are supposed to use the ISBN-13, as that is now the standard and ISBN-10 is depreciated. I've always been told that the two forms of the same number should always refer to the same edition of a given book -- different editions get assigned a different pair of ISBNs; certainly, that's how every US publisher I've worked with uses them. However, I recently noticed that the on Amazon.co.jp, the ISBN-13 of Aria volume 11 brings up a special first edition, while the ISBN-10 brings up the regular tankobon, so Japanese practice may be different. (There isn't this distinction with the rest of the Aria volumes -- I checked.) My suggestion is to check both ISBNs, and if they refer to the same edition on Amazon, use the ISBN-13. —Quasirandom (talk) 15:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

And how would I go about checking the ISBNs? I've never done that before.--十八 23:30, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Easiest way is to click the ISBN's wikilink, scroll down to the online bookseller section, and use the links there to search for it on, for ex, Amazon. Usually you can confirm whether it's the right book on Amazon.co.jp even if you don't have much Japanese -- you can change the interface (if not the titles) to English even. —Quasirandom (talk) 23:35, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

But...that only sends me around in a big circle. I can visually see both ISBNs on the Amazon.co.jp listing for the first Kashimashi manga, so I input those ISBNs into the link provided in the online bookseller sections on the ISBN special wiki page and it takes me back to the same listing on Amazon.co.jp both times, but of course it would because I just used the ISBNs listed on that page. Is this really 'confirmation'?--十八 23:40, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Yup. For that Aria volume I mentioned, the ISBN-13 and ISBN-10 bring up different pages. —Quasirandom (talk) 00:11, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

There's a converter (from ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 and vice versa) at isbn.org; you can also try calculating the check digit manually following the instructions at International Standard Book Number. In this case, the ISBNs are the same, so use the ISBN-13. —TangentCube, Dialogues 01:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Summary length

Don't get me wrong, I just love making new discussions (laugh). I have a question as to how long the summaries should be. Should we try to keep them as relatively short as the typical episode summaries for anime episodes, therefore only 4-5 lines of text on average? I have found this to be incredibly difficult to do for manga summaries since most manga volumes contain around 6 chapters each, and writing a concise summary of the entire volume with six (on average) different stories is rather rough compared to the singular story of a single anime episode. I checked WP:NOVSTY#Plot summary which states "Size of the plot summary should be roughly proportional to the size of the plot. This is not always equivalent to the length of the work, since some plots are complex and dense while others are simple and straight-forward." Since the plot for six chapters combined comes out to be rather long and detailed, is it alright to write a summary which touches upon the important points of each chapter? In doing so, I can tell that it would take on average 10 sentences for a 6 chapter volume in order to write a concise summary of the entire volume, but this ends up looking rather bloated next to the summaries of anime episodes. So what's the guideline for this?--十八 04:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

A very good question, and something I think we really need to address, not only for manga, but also for Japanese light novels. For some manga, I've been able to keep the summaries fairly brief. Wolf's Rain, for example, has 4-6 sentence summaries, but it isn't exactly a heavy series. With Marmalade Boy, which has no actual chapter breaks, I just made my first run at a summary of volume 1. Its 18 sentences long, and while it can probably be cut down some more, I'm not sure how much more. I think manga and novels can, and should, have longer summaries than a 30 minute episode, but we should work out some sort of guideline for both to keep things reasonable. Collectonian (talk) 08:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

For Yotsuba&!, I kept myself to a sentence a chapter, but chapters lengths vary all over the place and can be anywhere from four to ten per ~200 page volume. I didn't feel particularly constrained, but Yotsusba&! is a low-plot story. I'd say 7-12 sentences would be a good rule of thumb to start with. —Quasirandom (talk) 19:30, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Okay good, that's just about the length I was going for with List of Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl chapters. Each main summary (main plot) has about 10 sentences each, but then I added in a few lines about the omake chapters for volumes 2-4; hope that's okay.--十八 23:50, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Once we do more of these -- especially getting a few more through the FLC process -- we should put a general guideline in the WP:MOS-AM. —Quasirandom (talk) 00:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Volume titles

How should we handle titles of individual volumes? Most don't have them, but several of Watase's works do (FY, Ceres, Imadoki), as do some other series (Kenshin, etc). Putting with them the volume number results in a weird looking table. For FY, I've tried putting it as part of the volume extras, as one possible idea. Collectonian (talk) 04:33, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

VolumeExtras is the best place for it. Remember that VolumeNumber is also used to generate HTML anchors, so putting more than just a number there may make that feature harder to use. —TangentCube, Dialogues 05:12, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

In the discussions for creating it, VolumeExtras was the concensus place for volume titles. —Quasirandom (talk) 15:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool...thanks to both. That's what I did with Fushigi Yugi :) Man that article was in such hideous shape. *sighs looking at all the work left to do* Collectonian (talk) 15:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm...in revisiting this question again, it really seems like this template is not going to be helpful for a lot of the novel releases, as they almost always have titles, and having them over in the VolumeExtras isn't very useful for a novel format. Should we look at making a secondary template for light novels/novels, or just stick to regular tables for those? Collectonian (talk) 20:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

If we've gone this far for graphic novels, I don't think it's too much to ask to make a secondary template for light novels.--十八 20:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Thought: optional VolumeTitle

Should we give volume titles their own parameter? They seem to appear enough to warrant their own row. Maybe. —TangentCube, Dialogues 21:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

It would make the template more useful, particularly when using it for light novel lists. I've been putting it above the cover characters, but having a parameter would be nice. Collectonian (talk) 21:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

If someone could do a mock-up for the layout, we could better judge the utility, I think. I'm pretty sure we'd all agree it'd be good to have, if we can make it work. —Quasirandom (talk) 22:44, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

User:TangentCube/sandbox3, entries "01.5", "02", and "03" in the first table. —TangentCube, Dialogues 23:21, 5 April 2008 (UTC)